[Illustration VI: THE CUP-BEARER, KNOSSOS (_p_. 67)
From 'The Palace of Minos,' by Arthur J. Evans, in _The Monthly
Review_]
Gold was there in profusion, beaten into masks for the faces of the
dead (perhaps to protect them from the evil eye), into head-bands,
breast-pieces, plaques of all shapes and sizes, and wrought into
bracelets, rings, pins, baldrics, and dagger and sword hilts. Along
with the gold was store of wrought ivory, amber, silver, bronze,
and alabaster. One grave alone contained no fewer than sixty swords
and daggers; another, in which women only were buried, held six
diadems, fifteen pendants, eleven neck-coils, eight hair ornaments,
ten gold grasshoppers with gold chains, one butterfly, four griffins,
four lions, ten ornaments, each consisting of two stags, ten with
representations of two lions attacking an ox, three fine intaglios,
two pairs of gold scales, fifty-one embossed ornaments, and more
than seven hundred ornaments for sewing on garments! A few scattered
objects and a sixth grave were found later, the latter, however,
not by Dr. Schliemann. The mere money-value of the finds amounted
to something like four thousand pounds sterling!
Money-value, however, was nothing in Schliemann's eyes compared
with the thought that he had discovered the actual graves which
Pausanias saw, and in which Agamemnon and his companions were buried
after their tragic end at the hands of Aigisthos and Klytemnestra.
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